A look at the worst and the best

Online shopping is borderless, but it matters where your online retailer is based if you want to avoid fraud.

Forter, which makes fraud prevention software, found that countries where e-commerce fraud is more likely tend to have poor economies but accessible Internet infrastructure. They are also countries where the chances of being pursued by law enforcement and being extradited are lower, said Noam Inbar, vice of business development at Forter.

The company analyzed more than 1 million e-commerce transactions among a variety of online retailers in consumer goods, luxury, travel and financial services. Then it calculated the e-commerce fraud rates for each country based on complaints from merchants and consumers, looking at fraud committed by retailers and by consumers.

Forter's analysis also found that fraud rates of transactions using smart phones with Google's Android operating system were twice as high those using Apple's iPhones. The openness of Android systems makes them a bigger target for fraudsters, Inbar said.

The United States did not make Forter's list of countries best at preventing e-commerce fraud, even though the U.S. had e-commerce fraud rates below the global average. Fraud rates by state varied greatly with North Dakota having a fraud rate of virtually zero while Forter found more than 2 percent of the e-commerce transactions in West Virginia to be fraudulent last year.

Here are the five worst—and the five best—countries at preventing e-commerce fraud, according to Forter.